This Week in Startups - E1155: Daryl Morey on his eventful 2020, adapting to paradigm shifts, taking the Sixers job, building a winning organization & more

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

Angel investor Jason Calacanis (Uber, Calm, Robinhood) interviews the world’s greatest founders, operators, investors and innovators. Get an insider’s look into venture capital, learn how to start and scale your own startup, and ride the cutting edge of technology in today's headlines and beyond.

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Go to get Roman.com slash twist and get $15. off your first order of ED treatment, a free online visit, and free two-day shipping. Hey, everybody, welcome to this week in startups. I have been looking forward to this podcast for years, and when we finally booked it, for the last 48 hours, I have been absolutely ecstatic because today on the program, my favorite NBA player who has just absolutely blown my mind with what he's been able to accomplish over the last decade. He scored zero points.

He got zero rebounds and zero assists. But he is the player of all players as a general manager. You know him. Darry is on the pot today, formerly of the Houston Rockets for the past. I don't know if that was like 12 or 13-year run. You had Darrell. And now 14-14-year run.

Before that, he was at the Celtics under Danny Aange. before that he was in IT fixing network interface cards and novel networks like I was in the 90s. Welcome to the program, Darry. Thanks, Jason. It's an honor to be on and I'll try to live up to that intro. That's pretty crazy. Do you get an intro too? Do you get like a long intro too?

No, I mean, when I'm on other people's podcast, you know, they can ham it up. But in all sincerity, watching what you did with the Rockets as a long-suffering Knicks fan, to watch the Rockets, which, you know, this has a great history. Hakeem O'Juan was, you know, just one of the greatest all-time NBA players, won two rings, I think, and really changed the game in terms of finesse of the big man.

As the Rockets were, you know, like I don't want to say second-tier city, but it wasn't like a New York, a Boston, or a Lakers. And you somehow were able to have a series of, players on that team and then an amount of success, which is just, I don't know if any GM has had a run like you had. What are the statistics in terms of your winning percentage in terms of games and stuff like that when you were at the Rockets? Yeah, we had the second most wins of any team advanced in the playoffs more than, I think, two or three teams. Sadly, never had a losing season.

But sadly, don't have a ring. So, you know, in sports, you're only as good as how many rings you have. So I suck. I suck just like the other team. See, I don't believe that. As a long-suffering Nick fan, I look back on Patrick Ewing and, you know, Alan Houston and Charles Oakley as some of the greatest moments of my life just cheering on and being in those seats when they play Jordan in those series.

you never drafted a star, but you traded for some of the greatest players. And I don't know. Do you actually feel like you're a failure if you don't get a ring? Because so many of the great players had to go through either LeBron or Jordan. And is getting a ring really that the only thing that matters to you? Well, it's a big part of the culture. I would say, no, there's been a lot of fun, a lot of success. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, as long as your, you know, life's about happiness, right?

So it's been, it was a great run in Houston. I'm excited to be with the Sixers. But I would say, you know, it's like the white whale. It's like Ahab chasing the white whale, sadly. Let's talk about Simmons. People are saying he's like a jump shot away from being the next LeBron James. I think that's the most craziest thing. I've heard people say about him.

Tell me about him. Well, he's elite defensively. He's under age 25 already making all NBA teams on the defensive side. All NBA teams overall, top 15 in the league and also all defensive teams. He's also an elite passer. I mean, yeah, Simmons is unreal. I mean, he has a chance to be a transcendent player. That's why I said it.

Yeah, that's what's exciting for Doc and I is, Joelle, for sure, could be one of the most dominant bigs of all time, if not the most. And Ben could be one of these super unique players who, you know, throughout history we go, Ben Simmons, there probably won't be another one like him with his combination of skills. A 6-10, mobile perimeter and interior defender with handles and pass. it rarely if you're 610 it can pass the advantage you have is so big to be able to see over the defense

and he's so anyway he's super super unique Joel's super unique well I mean they're also 24 and 26 years old I mean yeah I know it's so awesome that is the dream is to have two players like that who you have you know whatever you're you're gonna have six seven eight years with them

when do NBA players like hit their peak with in terms of the vector of skill and passion and knowledge, I guess, because I'm not sure what the most important things are for, you know, an NBA player who's that elite. But I think wanting it is a big component of that. And there's something to do with maturity, I would think, of like really wanting it and being mature enough to say, this is my window, you know, and what age is the window where these two players can do their best work.

Yeah, players peak in the NBA. There's some reasonable debate on how to measure it, but somewhere between 25 and 29, I know that's a big range, but that's where, that's where players peak is if you, if you measure it, then there are exceptions, guys who peak earlier, guys who peak later, but, you know, if you just take it writ large across the NBA and do a correct work on the date, it's like 25 to 29. So, yeah, having Ben and Joel in these peak ranges is absolutely incredible. Chris Paul seems to be an exception to this.

I mean, what an outstanding season he had last year. Obviously, you had a bad beat with him getting injured. Why is he such an exception to this that he's still playing such elite basketball at such a, you know, advanced age? He's 10 years older than the window we're talking about. Hall of Famers generally last longer, but you can still argue for his peak being. So, like, Hall of Famers, like, keep their level of play. And I'd say Chris Paul's, you know, arguably the smartest player I've ever been around. Like, he's, his knowledge of the game is, you know, incredible, like, unparalleled.

Like, top five all time for sure. You resign from the Rockets. So you decided to leave. They changed the management. And I read, you know, basically, you know, it's a new boss. Maybe you want to try something else. Everybody thought you're going to take a year off, a bunch of speculation out where I'm from that, hey, Darrell's a really smart cat.

He understands investing. He understands gambling. He understands risk. You know, money ball kind of guy. Maybe he winds up at a venture firm. Maybe he winds up at a hedge fund. Did you actually consider and did you get, I know you got offer. So I'm curious how you looked at the possibility of doing something in an adjacency.

Or was that just Bill Simmons pumping you up? No, I had to think about everything. This last year has been pretty tumultuous for me with, you know, I started. took a stand on civil liberties that ended up getting a lot of attention. And there was a decent chance that I might never work in the NBA or sports again. And then also when I resigned, I thought that I was going to be off for a time and that maybe that path would be, you know, blocked for me because of that. And I was quite pleased it wasn't.

So I really thought about everything. Like what do I really enjoy doing? And as you can see, I settled on. I love what I'm doing. So I'm pretty fortunate to have gotten into it. It was my dream growing up to do what I'm doing. And so, you know, it's always nice to take that step back. You don't get to do it in life and say, you know what?

I really love what I'm doing and I want to keep doing it. But I didn't know if I was going to be able to. I did think I was going to be off for at least a year. The timing just wasn't normal for me to actually jump on with a team. So it was pretty cool that the 76ers, and Doc and Elm Brand and the ownership there all thought that I could come in, even though it was late in the day and help. How fast did they reach out to you after you resign?

Was it just like the next day? They're like, hey, listen, we need you. Get in here. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty immediate. Yeah, pretty immediate, yeah. That's got to be a great feeling when your phone blows up and you get that text, right? It is. Yeah, you don't know.

I mean, I think everyone who's had a long career has been through that moment where you're like, you know what, what's going to happen? Like, what's next? Do people really care? Are they just saying things while you're, you know, to be nice? Like there's a big difference between being nice, you know, at a high level at a party. And then, you know, having to say, okay, I really want to invest in this guy and I really want to bring him in. Those are two very different things.

And you never know the difference until you get to that moment. It's so true. There's people who will be cordial socially and say, hey, listen, if you ever need a gig or I'd love to collaborate with you and then crickets, if you ever reach out to them. I've had this experience as an investor myself. Do you want to have a strong start to 2021? I know you do. I do too. And Dell is here to help you kick off your 2021 right with their year and sell. Yum, yum, yum. Since most of us aren't spending money on holiday vacation this year, why not put that extra cash to good use and upgrade your

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And while you're there, you can sign up for a free IT consultation to find out the best solution for your team, big or small. The Dell team has been amazing. to us in 2020 and to the community. So many offerings, so many great products, looking forward to to working with Dell in 2021. Go ahead and go to launch.co slash Dell and get that incredible discount. You know, without getting into super details because I don't want to get you in more trouble. You know, and I was my first job was working for Amnesty International, the human rights organization. You took a stand on just, you know, something that was, you know, pretty innocuous.

but you took that stand with, you know, something that could hurt the pocketbook of a lot of people. And it was crazy to watch how much heat you got and how little support you got. As a fan of the league, you might have seen my tweets and some other people's tweets here in Silicon Valley. I mean, we came out strong and we're like, listen, this is completely crazy. We're Americans first and foremost. We stand for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and you cannot take an executive, an individual who just takes a moment in the most innocuous way to say American values matter and then blacklist them. This is insane. A friend of mine decided to make t-shirts and the Warriors game were filled with them.

What was that experience like? I don't want to get into details about it too much here. But just in general, when you're getting that kind of blowback, and you're not getting support, you're getting criticized. What was that period like in your life for you as a human? Yeah, that was the most intense period I've been through. As you mentioned, I've taken a little, you're a public figure, so am I. I've taken lots of stands.

And you do it to support something you believe in. I'm big on civil liberties, especially domestically with the ACLU. but I had many friends in that region from business school and they were going through a period where I felt like they needed support. I didn't, yeah, I didn't anticipate what would happen after. I will say like initially, obviously there are a lot of non-support, but I will say that behind the scenes there was actually a lot of support. publicly as you mentioned

a lot of the Bay Area got behind me which I really appreciated. Tim and Fritita, who took some heat, he actually was very supportive. Adam Silver was very supportive. And I always felt good that, you know, that I wasn't going to back off my comments

and that you know, it was a cause you couldn't back off was sort of how I looked at it and I was going to let the chips fall where they may and that's sort of scary because, you know, again, I just talked about how much I love what I do. So I thought that those two things may not be congruent, but thankfully, thankfully they were. And, you know, I think it's important for Americans to realize

the very privileged, unique position we are in the world to have been born in this country. And, you know, we sometimes get caught up in how this country is imperfect. And of course it is. It just happens to be doing a lot better than every other country when it comes to, you know, these issues. And if you look at some actors have been banned from certain countries because their portrayals were not in, you know, to the liking of certain political figures. And it's just crazy to think Richard Gere or, you know, Brad Pitt or others can't work in certain places. What we need to do is rally around the people who take those stances and say, no, no, we're all the same. And I was very, very a leave when I saw Adam Silver say, hey, listen, Daryl's one of us.

He's incredible and the NBA stands with him. And it felt like it took a little too long, but I think what people have to realize, these are delicate situations. And engagement with, it is an open issue if the engagement with certain, you know, groups encourages them to go in the right direction of history and humanity or not. And we were faced with it here in Silicon Valley with Saudi Arabia. You know, Saudis came in with a lot of money. And I passed on taking, you know, LP money from certain regions.

And, you know, I have a smaller fund because of it. But like you, I felt like this is just too important. Well, it's a big issue. It's all I'm going to get bigger, I think, because you look at, you know, the level of integration with manufacturing. with large entertainment studios that get such large funds from that region. It's only going to be a bigger and bigger issue over time. And I did appreciate there was, to your point, because it's delicate,

there was some initial non-railing, but then there was a lot of railing. And in fact, I think it's the only thing that AOC and Ted Cruz have ever agreed on was they both signed a letter together. backing me, which I'll also remember. That's pretty fantastic when you think about it. I think it's what we need to see more of in America is this kind of like, let's recognize the 98% of what we agree on, which is, you know,

the basic human rights tenants, which Eleanor Roosevelt put into the world in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949 or 50, like we've led the world in this concept. We are, we have an obligation to the world to continue this. and you look at somebody like Tom Cruise without pointing fingers of certain people, but their movies are funded by certain different, you know, regions of the world.

And you can't have a villain from that region of the world anymore. It's just crazy to think that a company like Disney is going to pick which, you know, Disney is going to pick the endings of movies based on how it's going to play in certain regions of the world. It's just the villains in movies is one of my most interesting thing. the arcs over time. When we were kids, they were, they were bond villains or whatever. And they've had trouble, you know, because, you know, obviously I think it's a good change for racist reasons and stuff. They haven't chosen certain villains that they might have in the past. But now they've settled on that all corporations are villains and everyone can,

everyone can get a rally around that corporations are horrible. Absolutely easy to make rich people the villains. Yes. If you're a billionaire, you're the villain. Yes, yeah. That trits says race. It doesn't have to be a Middle Eastern terrorist anymore. It doesn't have to be a Chinese terrorist. Big corporations. Big corporations.

No Germans, Nazis. Yeah, big corporations are the villains. Meanwhile, I'm filling my Amazon cart and hitting ship to me in 20 minutes and not thinking about the discongrucy of those two things. Well, yeah. I have this discussion to people about the polarization of wealth in the United States all the time. And when a market. it becomes global.

It leads to products and services becoming global. The NBA is the perfect example of that. What, you know, Stern did, Commissioner Stern did in terms of bringing basketball around the world. That actually has made the world understand each other and brought people together because you have people around the world playing basketball and then coming and joining our league, right? I mean, that's what that is a melting time.

Yeah, I think our league is 25 to 35% from non-U.S. foreign. And it's one of the amazing things about the league. I still think the NBA is easily one of the top few sports in the future. Among traditional sports, I really think the NBA and soccer are going to be the ones that win. And then e-sports is going to be huge as well. I wonder why soccer and basketball have become the absolute premier sports on a global basis. Why is that? I think it's, well, A, it is global.

I would say just the ease of you. You just need a ball. Soccer, you can really understand because you can make makeshift goals and things like that. So literally the fact with soccer that all you need is a ball and a field and you can put two cans of, you know,

Coca-Cola as the goal. Whereas with basketball, you do need to have a hoop, whether it's a, you know, a basket of peaches with the bottom taken out or whatever. But still, you don't need much. Yeah, that's my non-tested hypothesis.

I have no idea. Someone should freak an omics at and see if it's real. Oh, that's 100% real. Okay, all right. It's kind of be 100% real. Think about it when you were, I don't know if you were growing up, but like the idea that my brother wanted to play hockey, my parents couldn't afford the $700 in equipment and the $300 for ice time.

It was a thousand bucks for a kid from Brooklyn to be able to go play hockey. It was a non-starter. Football was a non-starter. That was hundreds of dollars in equipment. You know, like what's left? Yeah, Jason and Daryl agreed. QED. It must be true.

As someone who's invested in over 200 companies, I think it's getting to 250, may have to update the copy. And I've advised many more. I want to talk to you about a serious pain point, and that is your burn rate. Ask yourself, how much money are you spending on all these different software products out there? And how much time does it take to integrate them all together? Let me guess. Way too much. We all know that.

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That created a revolution where people were finding underappreciated players or looking at statistics that made you think differently about certain players. This moved over and you were involved in the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. This is something that people maybe aren't aware of. Explain how the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference was created, came down, and then how that went through the league and what those early years of moneyball coming to basketball were like. Yeah, as you mentioned, baseball was first.

The game really lends itself to data and analysis. It still does even more than basketball. And, you know, so early on, I actually was trying to work in baseball first. That's the fact I worked there at Stets Inc. in the early 90s, and then I had played basketball. And my hope was to... What did you buy? You were a point guard?

I'm 6-4, and I'm from a real small area of Ohio, so I was actually the tallest person on the team, which should... Which should tell you how many games we won. If your center is 6-4 in high school, you're not winning many games. But you played center when you put your back to the basket, you had to back people down and then just try to flip it up, right? Patrick Ewing-Stine. And I was very good at that.

But unfortunately, Just hit the box, right? Just hit the box, big guy. I wasn't very skilled, so I would just beat on people at my size. So this makes the jump in what year and what was the league like at that time? And how did the league, whether it's players, et cetera, look at it? Because I remember a lot of people were just maybe, you know, sports commentators where we're like, this is garbage, you know, statistics don't matter. Yeah, 2002 and the NBA statistics were pretty non-existent.

Some early stuff from John Hollinger and Dean Oliver, some of the pioneers in basketball, but not very listened to some pioneers like Dean Smith on the college level, who was doing possession-based analysis and things like that. But early on, it was just like baseball was in the mid-90s, and basketball is about 10 years behind and continues to be about 10 years behind. the evolution of baseball. And in 2002, I was working for the Celtics. That's where I got started.

And, you know, trying to convince first Jim O'Brien and Danny Ains and then Doc Rivers and Danny Aange about the utility of this. And both were pretty open to it. And so it's pretty cool now I'm reunited with Doc Rivers at the 76ers. And at the time when I was at Boston, you know, I was teaching a class with Jessica Galman, who's with the Patriots at MIT. And when I got the job in Houston, we were going to turn it into a weekend seminar, the class, and the seminar became a conference just sort of by accident.

And some VC started going there. I know my friend Bill Gurley would go there. Bill and Mitch Lasky were the two. The two benchmark guys were there very early. That's hilarious. Bill looked like he was like he belonged, right, at six, seven or whatever. he is. Bill's a Bill Gurley is a tall guy and it speaks at a certain pace. We have a...

That was the worst Bill Gurley impression I've ever heard. I get what you're trying to... We play poker every week and so I came up with my outrageous Bill Gurley. Oh gosh. He's... He's... He's... He's lost his Texas accent. He's lost. This is Bill Gurley when he's got the nuts at the game.

Well, I guess sometimes you got to make a stand. I'm all in. and then he turns over quad, straight flush, whatever. It's pretty hilarious. I've heard about this poker game. Is it like Molly's game? Or what do we talk? Well, you know, it's interesting. I got invited to Molly's game when I lived in LA a lot.

And she'd be like, oh, Toby's here. Oh, Leo's here. They really want to see it. I was like, they want to see Jason Calacanus lose 50 grand. They don't want to see Jason Calaganas. I don't give a shit about Jason Calganas. And I didn't go to those games because at that time I was playing with my friend Kevin Pollock, the actor, in his $200 buying game, which was hilarious.

because all of like, you know, Kevin Pollack's friends, J.K. Simmons one time, you know, Jimmy Woods. I mean, it was like the most incredible poker game to ever be at because it was half celebrities, half riders, Jim Brooks from the Simpsons. It was great. Our poker game's a little bit higher, but not crazy. But it's just good friends, you know, good friends talking, shop. And it really does. It's like a great way. What do you? What stakes are we talking? I've just heard about that. I know Dremont plays in it sometimes. Dremont plays. He's a great guy.

I want to talk a little about Dremah. We keep it relatively small so nobody gets hurts. There were people who were trying to raise the game up, but it's, I can say, like, $100, $200, $200. So you can play in it for four figures, no problem. And nobody gets hurt. You guys should put equity in just to make it more fun. That would be interesting.

I mean, it is, when you play in a poker game, you know, every week with this group of people, it's kind of surreal because it's just a collection of real winners, like, who are also very intelligent at the top of their games. So the conversations get really interesting. What was the first statistic that you discovered that gave you an epiphany or that was applicable? And then how does one take an epiphany or something they see in the data and then get a basketball player who's getting paid $20 million who, let's face it, maybe has their own opinion of how the game is played since they are an All-Star. How do you get that data observation onto the court? That's a great question.

Obviously, it's the hardest part. I think those who saw Moneyball, I think a bunch of people have seen it because Netflix decided to put it in their catalog and shove it down everyone's throats over the last month. But great movie. And they talk about getting on base, right, as the, first sort of, you know, disruptive stat for baseball. You know, Bill James knew that in 1979, but it took till the Red Sox and the A's and Tampa Bay really, really pushed those, the teams that really pushed it early. In basketball, yeah, it was very early on.

I was with, you know, Mike Zaron, who I hired, he was actually hard of Harvard Law, and he's still at the Celtics, and we were looking at this. And we were looking at, yeah, the locations of where people shoot and how efficient they are. And if you, it's sadly, you know, like sometimes the best innovations are the most simple, right? And baseball is just getting on base, it defeats not getting on base. Real shocking insight.

They call that on base percentage. Am I correct? They do. Yeah, that's right. So getting on base is a prerequisite to getting a home run. And home runs are what wing games. Well, the big key in on base, because I started in baseball, is actually less getting on base and more not getting out. So like...

Ah, wait, hold on a second. So the strikeout ends the inning. So getting on base doesn't end the ending, am I correct? Yes. Yeah, that's the getting on base means you didn't get out. So actually, it turns out the key innovation is not getting on base. It's not getting out. Now, those two things are two sides of the same coin, of course.

But people don't think about them as a... the same. But yeah, if you're getting on base, you can't get out. So getting on base is why that's, that's, you only have three scarce things. You have three out. So anyway, going back to basketball. Yes. And you're, if you're looking at the data, which obviously we were early at the Celtics. And it turns out, if you look at the data for more than five minutes, you say, wait a minute, there are these certain shots. People talk about three-pointers and, and rim shots. And, is being efficient, but it's similar to getting on base where it's not getting out. In basketball, it's not threes and rim shots.

It's don't shoot these shots between them that aren't very good. And if you look at that, the other thing that people miss and was felt like an insight, now it's pretty basic is if you go two for six from three point land, it's the same as getting three for six from two. you score six points on six shots. But it's important to note that on the three-pointer version, where you're going two for six from three and scoring the same, you have an extra miss, which you might rebound.

So it just, it actually, it actually gooses. Oh, wow. Hold on a second. I see what you're saying. The extra miss gives you a 33% more advantage in getting a rebound, which is a second shot. And do long shots have long rebounds as I was. Turns out no.

No, that's not true. Not true. You remember them because they fling off the rim. You go, oh, my God, then he got a run out. And coaches remember that. But it turns out, no, the distribution of a 24-footer is very similar to the 12-footer. It's almost identical. And which player was the first to kind of, which player and which squad was the first to sort of take this and run with it?

was it you or was it was it Dan Tony and you know what he did with that seven seconds or less and how did that play into it was he also at these conferences and half his own version of this yeah I'd say a lot of people sort of dabbled in it like

they sort of fell into it because I talked to those teams that were early innovators like Mike Dentone was our coach Slater in Houston and also actually Stan Van Gundy's Orlando team in the late the late aughts, however you say it. Both those teams look very modern.

They had four spacing, lots of threes. But if you actually go back and talk to Mike, talk to Steve Nash, talk to the key people on those teams, Jamir Nelson, who works for the Sixers now. Their personnel were sort of driving that, but no one was like saying, let's move that direction. In fact, Mike, who came

to the MIT conference, I think in 2008 or 2009, when he was between jobs, you know, he just said he like felt right, but if he had had the data, he would have pressed it more. So Nash, Nash has looked at everything and said like, boy, I would have shot way more if I played now. And he should have. He was like, he and stuff curry, the two, you know, best shooters of all time is on the data we have. And Nash just never shot like stuff.

And he should have. That's so unbelievable. and I remember my Knicks had this guy Steve Novak. Yeah, we dropped to Novak. I was actually my first draft book in Houston. Was it? See, now this was incredible because there was this little moment, just tiny bright spot we had in the last 20 years,

you know, since Sprewell and Camby and the Ewing era ended with the loss to in the shortened season, the 50 game season to the Spurs. We just had this like one glimmer of hope, which was when Steve Novak was, put in, you put the three-point specialist in, and then you got Carmelo Anthony, who everybody's got a double team because he's a scoring machine, and this kid would just hit 40% or something, but they would never put him in the game. And I'm like, why are we not running the offense

through this fucking guy? I was like literally wanted to throw my TV out the window. It would be hard to run the offense through Steve, although he had more game than people remember. He was actually running off screens and doing a lot of JJ Redick type stuff at Marquette. but yeah he he's not like a real creator he needs to be working with a jeremy lynn or someone who can get who can get him to ball my favorite steve novac story this is the most obscure part of your podcast right now is he would he would work really hard but it was on his shooting because that's his bread and butter so we had a shooting gun and the reason he didn't play more jason is obviously defense and so his own agent at one time was like novac keeps calling me

that you guys need to buy a better shooting gun. And I keep telling him that he needs a charge-taking gun. Like, he needs to work on that side of the ball. And he was probably right. That's why Steve is. And if he had just gotten 10 or 20% better at defense, would he have been like the Steph Curry kind of level? No.

He would have, like, he was probably a little bit behind Ryan Anderson, who's one of the best versions of the shooting four that we had in Houston. Yeah, I think Ryan might be one of the most elite of the Novak sort of type player. And then the Carmelo Anthony's of the world get caught in this little trap between the paradigm shift. And as they say in, I remember in psychology when I was a psych major, they said, listen, paradigms don't die people do. I think that's right.

That's 100% right, by the way. Yeah, like you just, some people cannot. just accept the new paradigm. So if you're Freud, you're not going to get into Skinner and behaviorism. Then if you're a Skinner, you're not going to get into cognitive. And Carmelo Anthony seems to have to have this. He seems to be the player who got caught in the paradigm shift. Is there any other play you can think of more who just got caught between these two moments? I would say Carmelo is really just too well. He actually had a really good year with Portland last year. I would say it's the Biggs that have

had the biggest paradigm shift. So like a Roy Hibbert type player. To me, they're like the dinosaur that's roaming across the planes while the velociraptors are coming to take them down. So yeah,

the real question, Jason, and I always think to myself, is like, what will be the paradigm that you and I can't accept? Because both of us are pretty forward-thinking guys, but there's going to be one that even you and I can't allow into our brains probably well I mean it the the I don't know what they called that league where three play three players play

three on three like the big three yeah the big three okay there it is yeah they added that four point shot now that seemed oddly compelling that big three league with that four point shot we hear this all the time coming up with the NBA do you would think there is a chance and when this comes up in the discussions because you're a GM this must come up all the time I mean maybe it's in the owners and you don't get to go to that or do you get to go to that? And when they talk about four-point plays, what is the reaction? It would ruin the game or it'd make the game turn into NBA. What is that video game, a 2K or whatever?

Yeah, you're thinking of NBA jam or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So the four-point shot wouldn't change basketball that much. It turns out, like, just in the way, like, if you just put it at 40 feet or something, you know, you're, you could shoot it. it would change a little bit of the end of game dynamics, but my guess is just knowing the data, the four point shot would be similarly efficient to the three point shot at 24 feet. What probably would help the NBA is if the current three point shot became worth four and all two point shots became worth three, that would actually balance the game.

Right now. Oh, right. That would make it only 33% more. Yeah. Right now, the sort of percentage tradeoff between those two is a little bit off. I do not think this is something that the NBA will adopt, and nor am I not necessarily recommending it. It's just a fact that the three-pointer being worth 50% more is not necessarily good for the game.

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And it's free two-day shipping. Go ahead and go to get Roman.com slash twist for $15 off your first ED treatment, a free online visit, and free two-day shipping. Do you think the game now is being, I don't want to use the word ruined, but there is, you know, people in our era of basketball who grew up watching the 80s and the 90s and the idea that Alonzo Morning or Patrick Ewing would play or Jordan would play for a second team. when they sent Ewing to the Sonics, we basically lost our minds as New Yorkers. Like it was, it almost made you want to cry to see Patrick.

I mean, I literally physically felt sick seeing Patrick Ewing in another uniform. And here we are where the greatest player in the game right now, LeBron has been on one, two, three teams. And he's done two stints and calves. So he's been on essentially four teams. And then he's going to go to the Knicks with his son. to close it up from what I understand. He'll play for four or five teams or four or five stands. Is this making the game more interesting or less interesting in your mind?

I think more, I mean, I think it's just a general acknowledgement that the players are the product. And I think the NBA has been the first league to lean into that. I do think to our point on paradigm shifts or whatever, I think it's hard. But if you take really anyone under 30, they're rooting for the players and they sort of follow the players between the, teams more than they're rooting for the teams. And if you look at e-sports and you look at, you know, streaming on Twitch and whatever thing, it's really become more where you are rooting for an individual who you get behind, who you like their humor, their ideas, how skilled they are, things like that.

And that is more portable. And I think it's honestly folks like you and I who, you know, we're excited that Mark Price played nearly as well, you know, with the calves for all his important years, um, is, uh, you know, something that's exciting to you and I. But I don't think the younger fans, which the NBA has really cultivated well, care as much about that. Let me ask you about my, my friend, Dremont. A lot of people are like Dremond is just lucky because he plays with staff and clay.

Other people are like, this guy is a transcendent leader and just an amazing player. What does this wild card of Draymond Green who is, you know, has so much energy, will stand up to anybody on the court, incredible on defense. I think he's a great passer and he can shoot relatively well. What makes him so special? Is he overrated, underrated? I think he's underrated. Underrated.

He's amazing. What makes him amazing? Well, I'm scarred. I mean, he took us out as much as any player in the Golden State teams who beat us, I believe, five times. You brought it up, so let's go there. Tell me about the one. Let me finish Draymond. Yeah, Draymond, go ahead.

Yeah. Yeah, I was so good. So I would say the quintessential skill that Draymond can do that maybe is underappreciated unless you're someone in my job, he can guard the rim. and at the same time guard a three-point shooter in the corner on the same play. Let's say a guy's driving straight at the hoop. He can essentially either stop that drive or get him into a difficult shot

such that they want to pass the corner. He can still make the close-out to the corner at 22 feet. That's somewhat, I don't know I've ever seen anyone else who can do that. Very few. And that's an amazing skill in today's. NBA. Because you have this three, because you have that, it's almost like he is the superhero,

or in a way, super villain to the James Hardin of the world who's so specialized in hitting a three and also so deft at getting to the rim. Yeah, he's almost the perfect modern big. The nemesis. The perfect modern big. And he's competitive. And yeah. So, you know, we used to play a game in Houston, which was which player, because they had like four or five, depending on how you're counting, amazing players, which is really unfair for those to the league. I'm not complaining. Or maybe they are. Well, I mean, they had Steph.

They had Clay. You had Draymon. And then, of course, KD put it over the top. But even without KD, you did have Iigodalo, who seemed to have very high IQ. And I don't know if Harrison Barnes was super high IQ or not. But he did seem very thoughtful. conversations I've had with them. He seemed very smart.

I don't know if he was a great basketball player or not. Was he? Ligodala? Oh, Igodala is, yeah, extremely good. That's why Kerr, the year that we almost beat them in 18, I think Coach Kerr correctly points out that Igwoodal was out. No, we obviously had multiple players out as well, Mbaudet and Chris Paul.

But, yeah, no, my point is the game we would play. Houston is like, if we could take one player off Golden State, who would we take off? And it's actually an extremely hard answer and no one could agree. Okay, well, let's take it through. What was the best argument you heard for taking Steph? Best argument you heard for taking Dremont, best for taking Clay? I think it would take too long, but what I, to answer that, but what I will say is, I generally would answer Dremont and I'm pretty sure, and everyone told me I was wrong,

but he was the unique element that was that no other team had that we, when we played them, that's hopefully not taking anything away from the other great players you mentioned. What's exciting is they were like an amazing cohesive unit, fit together very well by that Golden State organization. And unfortunately, we didn't beat them. Let me ask you about passing the ball in the league. there seems to be this

correlation between ball movement and how many people pass the ball just as a fan. I mean, I guess I'm a super fan of the NBA, let's be honest. It always seemed to me that the Warriors would take that extra pass or two, almost like unnecessary number of passes. And is that a strategy for success

or is that just something that I'm perceiving as a neified who doesn't understand the game as well as you? You said the most important word, which is correlated. So, yeah, if you correlate number of passes to efficiency on offense, you'll find some really positive things. Causality there is really hard to tease out. So I'm going to have to give you like a non-answer on that.

I do think there's a lot of like sort of systemic effects that are positive that, you know, Coach Kerr, for example, pushes out a lot so does Coach Rivers. So there are some larger sort of positives and psychology that come from that, but they're very hard to tease out of the data. All that said, I do believe they're there. It's just hard to know how much emphasis to put on it. Most of the time in my job, it's not, is this true or is that true or is this important or is that important? It's like how much more important is each one?

Interesting. Because you're managing human beings who have to execute 82 times. a year. And so we know this when we're working with founders of companies, like, you can, or those founders are working with their management teams. And there are 20 things that make a company successful. But we can only keep two or three things top of mind. And what I'm reading into when you say the passing and the correlation is there are other effects, and I'm going to guess here, that one of the effects is that teams that players that trust each other and work better together, pass more. And that,

that teams that don't trust each other, or maybe there's some lack of trust or maybe just they're not as tight with each other, maybe they don't pass as much, and therefore that is the success, is the team spirit. Am I reading into that psychology? That's a factor.

There's also a team construction element. So if you have Novak, like we did, there are players who aren't really going to, or passing isn't their skill. They're just there to be field goal kickers, as we call them. Novak's the ultimate field goal kicker. He waits until the ball comes.

If he gets it, he shoots it. He makes it. So we call them field goal kickers. It's hard to play a high pass move offense with players like that. What's most important, and you're much better at team non-MBA, like Silicon Valley type team construction than me. What matters the most is having something that all fits together, the people, the strategy, the systems,

the incentives that go with it, how you're reaching the customers. All of them have to sort of fit together, and then you have success. And like the way the Warriors built their team, obviously Supreme is successful, probably the best team of all time. We built our team our way. Yeah, the data would say for sure, for sure not adjusting for time period. Golden State is the best team ever. I don't think it's actually particularly close.

What do you think Kevin Durant? And I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah. No, what I was going to say like where people have a legitimate debate is like relative to their era, are they the best team ever? That's more of a debate. But if you were just to say, can I pick any team from history that was an NBA regular team, not like a dream team or whatever.

Yep. You would, Golden States team at their peak, you know, would win pretty handily. They'd win. They'd be like the Bulls teams in the 90s, like 15. Yeah. Yeah, and those teams did not have the advanced analytics. They were playing with the direct rule set. So it's kind of hard to.

It's like it's not even fair, right? It's not even fair, right. It's like saying, Usain Bolt would be, you know, a sprinter from, from 1982. Yes, he would. Yeah, without the recovery and training and analytics, all these things have slowly every year, the league gets smarter. So what is the, I mean, I'm asking you about your edge right now,

which you can't give. because you don't want other teams to have it. But over the last couple of years, you know, now that we know, three-pointers, 50% more, you know, mid-range jumpers, they're disastrous for a number of reasons. What is the collective wisdom over the last two or three years of what is the edge in playing the game?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think the enduring edge since the NBA started in the 40s is, you know, having these elite players. We have more elite players. Our elite players matter more than any other of the major professional sports. The way I described that is take maybe the best hitter of all time. Mike Trout, you can argue for, Barry Bonds at his peak. And basketball is like after they go up to hit and they hit a home run,

it would be like if Barry Bonds could say like, oh wait, I'm still the best player. I'm going to go hit again. There's no lineup. So if you have Joelle and Bid and he's dominating in the post and he comes down and, you know, dominates the guy he's on, you come down the floor again, you don't, you're not required to rotate to someone else. You can go to DOL and get. Yeah. The other thing is our players play both ends and there's only five on the floor. So our elite players matter. So the enduring advantage in the NBA are these elite players. And then there

have been pockets of areas where you can create an edge like with shooting like we talked about and there have been some some other ones recently that aren't as public now. So, I mean, those edges erode, but the enduring advantage of the NBA are having these 10 to 20 elite players out of the 440. How much better are the top 10 than, let's say, 30 to 40, you know, like that cohort of people still? It's asymptotic. They're not even on the same scale. Really? Yeah.

You can't even compare them, really. And then the top 10 to the top 20 to 30 or the top 10 to the next 10? Yeah, I mean, it's basically like an asymptotic chart. I wish I could throw it up where, you know, you get into a pretty flat area somewhere around, you know, 18 to 25 where, you know, the drops are very shallow after that. There's like, there's probably 20,000 players, you know, in the world who could be the 12th guy in an NBA team. Really? The difference between the 12th guy and NBA team and a top player in the G League and the top two or three players on all the elite teams in Europe are non-negligible. There's probably slightly better than the NBA, but not a big difference.

So my hope that my Knicks will ever be able to get out of this tailspin are my own delusion because I'm watching the game last night going, oh my God, I love this guy, Obie and RJ looks better. The Nix will always have a chance because it's a city that players want to play in. And so I think macro-wise, you know, the Nix will be. I mean, this is just to be totally honest. This whole discussion is a front for me to build a relationship with you because I am literally working the next 10 years to get enough of a down payment on the Nix. And then I'm going to circle back around with you and be like, Darrell, please, please come to the Nix. Can you imagine if you and I were to get the Nix to the finals and we're going to. championship what that would mean for new york i'm trying man i'm just focused on the 76ers

of course you're let's do that right now i will say philly fans are awesome they remind me of where i grew up in cleveland just completely delusional and psychotic for their teams which i love so how does one deal with uh when you're constructing this team players who maybe have great moments and great potential, but who just don't take it seriously. We had a player on the Knickerbockers named J.R. Smith. And, you know, he had these moments where you just felt like this guy could be, you know, an all-star if he could just stop untying people's shoes on the free throw line. And I'm sitting there as an NBA and I'm just looking at that we're paying this guy how much money to untie people's shoes during an actual NBA game. First of all, it's

NBA champion, Jared Smith. So he's got to get a little respect. I got to put some respect on his name. I would say, you know, not talking specifically about JR, but if you think about it, how often will the bell curve of the physical attributes needed, the drive needed, the intelligence needed, how often are they going to all overlap? So you're most likely going to have a talented player who might not have the drive. Are you going to have a highly skilled player?

You might not have the athleticism needed. You know, it's very, when they do all overlap, that's where you get the top 10 to 20 players in the NBA. But the reality is most of the time those bell curves aren't going to all overlap on the right side of the Z, at the right side of the bell curve. What do you do internally as a team? Do they have like, you know, again, putting J.R. Smith way off. We're not talking about him anymore.

But just in general, like the psychology of this is so important. how does the NBA behind the scenes or how do teams behind the scenes manage, you know, the emotions of the players, the trials and tribulations of just being a human on planet Earth, which can affect them? Kevin Love's been very, you know, incredible leadership talking about mental illness in his case, depression. How do NBA teams deal with that? Because you're on the road for all this amount of time. You're very young. You're given $100 million. you're given $50 million, whatever it is.

And that gets in your head. That's got to get in your head. How do the NBA teams work with them? Do they have counselors? Do they have therapists? Or do you just, you're at arm's length because you can't get that personally involved in somebody's life? The answer is yes, a lot of resources.

I mean, I think you've been around successful people and not successful people. And mental health is super important. But, I mean, step one is, yeah, yeah, they have to say they want, they want change, they want help. So teams in the NBA have done, I think, a really good job, including our teams, of providing those resources and encouraging it and setting up the environment where that's easy and important. But at the end of the day, you know, it's sort of Jerry McGuire.

Like we have to say help us, help you often. When guys are struggling, it's often hard to reach them, you know, based on maybe the people in their ear, their habits, all these kinds of things can often can get in the way of them getting the help they need. But the NBA's had a lot of strides. And again, I'd credit Commissioner Silver on this in, you know, making sure the teams are providing those resources and the league and the players union are providing those resources. It is something that's very pronounced in our industry as well, because we've had, I mean, tragedies of people killing themselves.

We've had people may have mental breakdowns. And we've really tried to provide that resource to CEOs because people forget how lonely it is to be elite because there's very few people you can relate to. Everybody around you, you have to worry about the agenda. Are they trying to get close to power for money or what is their motivation to be close to either a superstar, whether it's a superstar CEO, an elite player, etc. and, you know, it's asking for help is hard, right? I mean, it's just hard for certain people.

Well, yeah. And then you have to realize that the people who make it there are generally have probably some, some quirk to, I won't say a mental problem, but some would call it that. Like, they have some quirk that makes them, like, incredibly driven or incredibly, you know, out of the norm and how they think. it's it's it's it's it's super rare for someone to make it to those heights that that you've seen of the companies you've been a part of and help found and everything where they're just you know they're doing normal things prior to that it almost it's almost never happens

um stewards stewards don't do very well well yeah i mean if you think about it it's there there is some reactor inside of people right and i always tell people like sometimes it's that pressure that makes the diamond and, you know, you look at the child. I mean, you show me a great founder in our industry. I will show you four out of five times a parental relationship that was not optimized. Let's leave it at that. Yeah, no, I had, I mean, my parents were, we all had some flaws in our parents, but my parents were solid and together, but I had a, I had a rough, I didn't get along with people when I was a kid and I had a rough childhood. I'm sure many, many, many people have had that that, that you're around and it actually can be a positive

thing. They're not testing for cannabis this year. This is a good thing in the NBA. I saw Steve Kerr was a very big proponent of cannabis because, you know, listen, if you got pain back in the old era, there was a lot of people, I think Alonzo Morning suffered from this. He was taking all this Adderall. Patrick Ewing, these guys were taking all this ibuprofen.

screwing up their kidneys. And then people started to get onto opioids and people take a Vicod and all this stuff. That's been a big change this year. Yeah, no, I think the NBA and the Players Union have done a really good job. Our players are super healthy. And like the bubble was a great environment in that, you know, really all we had to do is focus on basketball. Guys were getting sleep who don't normally get sleep.

I mean, it was actually really... No clubs to go to. Yeah, a good environment. I would say on cannabis. I mean, you know, I leave it to the league how they're doing that, but it does seem pretty hard to, you know, something that's legal in a bunch of states seems like a tough one. Yeah, exactly.

Tell me about the bubble and what that experience was like. You were in it and were you in it for how long? I was in it. I wanted to be in it longer because that would mean the rockets made it farther. It was good. It was, you know, it was like a peer play in basketball, you know, it probably wore on me mentally pretty heavily. But, you know, I'm pretty good at getting through those things. But it definitely made me think a lot and, you know, was sort of made me contemplate what my next steps were.

I was hoping it was going to be after we won the title. We were up 1-0 on the Lakers. And, you know, that was probably the heights of. our excitement before, you know, they beat us four straight. So that was a little frustrating. Given this conditioning that we've seen, it used to be big men would be done around 35 and guards might make it to 38 or something. Just my outsiders. Those are top top players. Most players and much earlier, like, if you make it to the early 30s in the NBA, you've been, you're a good player. Like, you've been above average. How long can what most people,

able consider one of the, you know, Mount Rushmore's. How long can LeBron continue to perform at this level? Because everybody talks every year about, hey, you know, what let's, you mean, you have less gas in the tank, blah, blah, blah. And it'll look like peak LeBron this year. Yeah, he's already breaking everything. He's a little like Nolan Ryan where he's already, like, if you look at historically players of that age, he's already like multiple standard deviations out of the norm. Of the, of the ones who even make it to that age, which means you're already talking mostly, like, near Hall of Famers or Hall of Famers. So, yeah, he's, he's amazing. He's, to me, I get in trouble. He's easily the best player ever. It's not, it's not even an argument at this point. He's not.

And if Jordan had to go up against him, even though Jordan had a better record in the finals, it just, it's a different error, right? I mean, a Jordan plus the same squad versus LeBron plus the same squad equals LeBron wins. You mean this year's Lakers versus one of those Bulls teams from Well, I was thinking even more of an intellectual like sort of what if. Like if you could put LeBron on that, if you could swap LeBron and Jordan on the same Bulls team and they played each other with Pippin as their number two, et cetera, and Rodman as their number three.

Or you put, you know, Jordan next to Anthony Davis and LeBron and you could simulate that in a simulation. yeah i mean it's hard to but yeah i mean lebron is probably i mean he it's my favorite

ways they they put lebron down is that he made it to a few finals he didn't win like it's worse to make it to the finals and lose than it is to lose in earlier rounds uh which is really insane but yeah if you you stack it up historically it's it's not even

particularly close at this point what do you think about this season and how it's going to play out we're obviously here you know last night i was watching the nick game and it was an empty stadium uh but obviously we're going to have to deal with some players are going to get corona they're out in the real world it's going to happen we got the vaccines coming what's the league's outlook for this year because they only announced the first half of the game's possibility we go back into a bubble maybe even yeah i'm pretty optimistic i mean we're we're shooting for seven two games and then playoffs.

And, you know, I think the good thing is the NBA has done a really good job with protocols. I get tested every day. We're like in sort of an external bubble right now. And, you know, I think now that we know how it transmits, it transmits in small rooms without mass. And now that we know how it transmits and the testing we have in, I think creating a safe environment is possible and actually just navigating all the different states.

and city rules is honestly one of the most challenging things. But I think we're going to get all 72 in. And then the playoffs, yeah, they haven't said how those are going to be done. Well, I mean, if the playoffs, the playoffs are scheduled to hit at the same time, the May June kind of situation? Yeah, I think it's going to, well, maybe, I think we're about shifted off a month right now. So I think they're normally starting April,

they're going to start in May, which means it'll probably end closer. of the end of July than June. I did the math on this. You know, we've had about a hundred million people who've already had COVID in the United States because for every person who gets tested and is positive. Is that right? Well, I mean, the official number is like 15, 16, 17, you know, going up every 200,

but that's of people who've been tested for it. So it's got to be five. You're imputing, you're imputing a larger number. Yeah. Yeah. So it's got to be 75. And then you got 100 people getting the vaccine in the first 100 days. And obviously, if it's that many, then yeah, we're going to get through this quicker.

Yeah, I mean, I think that and the people who will get it will be at risk. I think it's just going to go from this peak of three or four thousand people dying a day, right down to 200 in March or April, and we're going to very quickly sort of get to the yolo. Well, it's very bad right now. Hopefully we get things cleaned up in our hospital system is pretty quick because right now it's sort of bad, obviously. who are the most underrated and I'll end on this who are the most underrated players when we look at this

last decade of players we talked about obviously Dremont Green maybe not being fully appreciated who else isn't fully appreciated in this time in this era yeah it's a good question I mean you mentioned Iguado I think is a good one I love the fact that Miami backed up the truck

for him for those last two years that was nice to see him get paid. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's a very smart guy. He's probably in your circles. I know he was not really. He don't play cards. I met him a couple times, but you know, he does invest and he's very smart. Yeah, very. Boget's good. We're good friends with Bogot too. We play cards all the time and my friends. He's good. Boogin and I went through the similar thing of getting called names by the Asian region. So, so yeah, well, he's pretty pretty outspoken. You, what, what, Bogot was a pretty elite passer, efficient on the court, yeah? Extremely good room protector, great passer.

Yeah, I think at his peak, he was underrated, absolutely. I do think he's someone where the game changed enough because a big who is not mobile on the perimeter gets hard. Yeah, he had problems with his ankle. Yeah, he had challenges. Yeah. Well known. We were trying to trade for Bogat when he got traded.

to the Warriors that first time. What do you think of Porzingis? This was heartbreaking for me as a Knicks fan to watch him get traded, but obviously he was, you know, got a lot of injury issues. But is that like the prototypical person who will lead the league into the next era,

you know, seven plus footer who can shoot threes? Or is it more like the Lukas, the Ben Simmons, you know, the people who are, you know, maybe six, eight, nine, ten, who can do it all? The answer is yes. So the issue, what's going to get valued more over time is skill. So ability to dribble, move, shoot, shoot in different types of actions, pick and roll, you know, transition, things like that. And then mobility are the ones that are like, and if you can't be a non-threat on offense anymore,

used to be you could hide like a one player who was just focused on defense or one player who just wanted to pass you used to be able to hide you know those players you could put on the floor it's very hard to put anyone on the floor and that who can't do multiple things um and yeah the players you mentioned they all they all are um they all are like that they're all they're all set up for the modern game the ones you mentioned so any chance that the the league will refer back to big men, you know, as everybody's doing these, this three-point shooting, and you put two seven-footers or, you know, two seven-footers in a six-foot-ten person or a seven-point-three person. We saw a bowl-bow has got like, that kid can, I mean, he's moving like Porzingis a little

bit, and they have ball handles now, seven-footers with a ball handle. It's really crazy to watch. Is somebody going to, what would happen if somebody put, you know, you had obviously small ball and you crush teams with it? Is there a. possible of doing like big ball will you put three seven footers through two seven footers and a six ten person in the front line yeah i love that i love that he said that i do think our game's dynamic like that and absolutely you know for a while we had dwight howard and omere ashek and we started both of them in a playoff game one time um and yeah i think you you win in the mb a either your efficiency of your shots or getting extra shots.

And a lot of the recent era has been on more efficient shots and the skill and everything involved. And someone's going to focus on generating extra shots. Generating extra shots is actually more impactful. It's just hard to do on a consistent basis. And someone's going to do what you said. We've dabbled in it. And actually the current Sixers team is set up to, to do things like that.

We'll see, we're going to do whatever it takes to win. Doc's going to figure that out. But there are different ways to win. And, yeah, I love what you said. There's been, there's been successful multi-big lineups

to counter some of the smaller lineups, yes. Well, I mean, the extra shot comes from the extra rebound. Am I correct? Correct. Yeah, or steals. Or a put-back?

Yeah, so offense rebound is a put-back. And then, yes, or generating more possessions through steel, not possessions, more plays, more shots through steel. Who's the best defensive player in the last 20, 30 years? What a good question. Kevin Garnett, I think, is pretty easily the best, you know. Yeah.

And he was underappreciated. That's how the Celtics got him. I think he was underappreciated as how good a defender he was. I believe the defense doc and Kevin Garnett and that team put on the floor in O. Wade is still the greatest defense relative to their end. era. Was that the year? Was that the year they beat the Lakers?

That's the year they won the finals. Yeah. And I was at that game. I knew Phil Jackson at the time, and he had hooked me up with it. And he was, Phil Jackson was, the GM were coaching at that time. He was the head coach. He was the head coach. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that was incredible to watch. You had Rondo, Garnett, who is there? Paul Pierce. Paul Pierce. who's a grinder. That guy, he plays poker too. I haven't played with him.

Ray Allen. And you had Ray Allen for the three. And that would be that construction of a team where you could hide maybe bad shooters. Rondo was a bad shooter at the time. But you had this collection of like, they reminded me a little of the Knicks. They were kind of gnarly on defense. Yeah?

Yeah. Your Knicks team were a little overrated. Sorry to tell you. Like, you know, they didn't. Why did we get so far every year? Was it just our heart? He didn't win. He didn't win.

just like the rock. It's all about rings, Jason. But we got to two. We got to two finals. Yeah. Houston, we almost. And we I mean, think about that. We got some multiple conference finals, which is like the Western conference finals is basically the finals. It is true. It is true.

All right. I'll end on this. My Greek brother, Giannis, what's the upside on him? What's the upside on him? Two years ago, nobody could stop talking about him in Porzingas. And I don't even hear him getting brought up as much anymore.

Well, I think incorrectly, people are focusing on the playoffs there. I get it. But, I mean, yeah, he's MVP, so I don't, yeah, for a reason. So I think, I think his upside is pretty good. What does he need to add to his game to be really like LeBron-level elite, you know, to get into that sort of category? I mean, he's, I mean, LeBron's his own special. category. Yeah, he's, he's there. He's, he's, he's, he's good. I think it's, you know, again, he's, he's, he's super

young. So it takes a few times like, you know, you go back to Jordan. I think it was like his fifth or six time in the playoffs before they won. So how excited are you for this season and this opportunity? Yeah, extremely. I mean, it's, I mean, I'm sort of pinching myself. Normally, when you step away, you're away for a while and normally you don't get to be in. situation is good with, you know, two superstars in their prime and a great roster around it. So I'm very excited. And you've got a great coach. Yeah, Doc, just to be reunited with him is incredible.

Why is Doc so good? What, I mean, do people, he seems, I mean, just as my outside, you're the insider. From my outside perspective, it seems like he connects with the players and they trust and listen to him. Am I correct that he as a former player and as just in some way, he seems very raw in like when I saw him commenting on Black Lives Matter and some of this stuff he seems to be the real deal in just in terms of connecting and the humanity he has he drips humanity to me am I correct yeah I think you know that I think you've seen these leaders in in the Bay Area as well the ones who can attract talent and then they want to run through walls for

them those are that's a pretty remarkable skill and I think Doc has that he's shown that multiple times over his career. Is that a function of he just spends the time with everybody, like has the dinners, you know, plays cards, whatever they, whatever NBA players are doing, is it that you just have to spend that time and build that deep relationship with them so that when they're on the court and you're in this peak moment, you've got that fabric? I think he's extremely intelligent and he's a former player so he can connect. Then on top of that, he's studied leadership. Like, whenever I talk to him, he's like, you know, I talked to Burk a ball. I'm a talk to, you know, so he's, he's one of these guys who's always learning and always

picking things up from some of the great. And he has more access to these great people than you or I do as well. I mean, it's actually incredible his, his, his roller decks and the people he's learned from. All right. Listen, Darrell, I could talk to you for hours and I did. I talked to for 75 minutes. And you're getting ready for the season. So I really appreciate it.

I'm going to bust my ass. This is my promise to you. I am going to bust my ass for the next 10 years, investing in 100 companies a year. I need somewhere between 7 and 15 more Uber's and Robin Hoods. And then I have the potential, potential to get Dolan to sell me the Knicks. And if I can do that, I'm sliding into your DMs. I'm texting you.

You're my guy. I appreciate it. That's what this is about down. That will be after multiple Sixers titles. Absolutely. When you're done with the Sixers, I'm going to be sitting there five, six rows back. I'm going to let you run the team however you want because you are the greatest. Watching what you did in terms of the collection of stars and the performance and the winning percentage and the bullshit you had to deal with and how you fought through it. You have my respect and it's just, I'm in awe of what you did with Houston Rockets. I cannot wait to see what you do at Simmons and B. So congratulations. It's great to know you.

I appreciate it, Jason. Thanks for having me on. It's an honor. I appreciate it.